Generally useless high definition disc cracking code causes Digg mass problems

Let me say from the start that the main point of this story isn't really anything to do with high definition discs at all. It could have been missile launch codes, or the President's safe combination, and it would have had about as much impact, or been as much use to 99% of the general population, as this.

The fact is, though, that the cracked keys that enable HD DVD and Blu-ray discs' copy protection to be circumvented have been posted up all over the Internet, and then voted for on the Digg social news/bookmarking site.

Unsurprisingly, it's caused a frenzy of controversial activity.

Firstly, Digg received a Cease and Desist order issued by the MPAA, requiring that the offending links (which had reached the front page with massive amounts of votes) were removed.

This led to a revolt by Digg users who were annoyed by the fact that this 'democratic site' seemed to be intervening and removing entries or votes. They then effectively attacked Digg with new posts and comments, all containing the offending 16 digit hexadecimal key.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson wrote on the site:

"I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories that have been submitted to Digg on the HD-DVD encryption key being cracked.

"This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We've been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

"Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information - and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

However, this morning, Digg founder Kevin Rose effectively gave the middle finger to the MPAA, with this post on his blog:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

What's bizarre about this is that this code has been floating around the Internet for weeks now, supposedly 'under the radar', and only since it's been popularised by Digg has this fuss surfaced.

What's also amusing is that most general consumers are never going to make use of this code. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most general consumers are never going to use Digg. And even those (generally tech savvy) people who do use Digg aren't going to rush out and use the code just because it's appeared on Digg. They'd either know about it already, and what to do with it - or not.

As you can see, this isn't really a high definition issue at all - it's more to do with how 'Web 2.0' sites deal with Cease and Desist notices from large organisations. We've seen it with YouTube and Viacom, and countless other companies.

It's just interesting that a number that a few elite can make use of to copy a few high definition discs has caused such a fallout on the geek side of the web.

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